Have you got a diesel car ? Did you buy it on HM Governments recommendation ? Are you beginning to feel royally screwed ?

As an owner of diesel cars for the past 20 years (or thereabouts) I am feeling 'reet annoyed'. First the Government pushes everyone towards buying a diesel car, then the oil companies put the price of diesel up higher than petrol, despite it being cheaper to produce, and now us diesel car owners are being painted as scum.

Exactly why have the Government picked on us when a lorry (diesel) engine is typically six times as big (in capacity) than a car ? Why not pick on them ?

Also, why not consider the size of a diesel train angine. How many litres are they ? How many gallons per hour do they use ?

Has anyone thought of the impact of banning ALL diesel engines in use today ? No transport system, pasenger or freight, disaster in the agricultural sector. Plus finding all those nice shiny new cars at affordable prices for us who have to give up our cars.

Have you got a diesel car ? Did you buy it on HM Governments recommendation ? Are you beginning to feel royally screwed ?

As an owner of diesel cars for the past 20 years (or thereabouts) I am feeling 'reet annoyed'. First the Government pushes everyone towards buying a diesel car, then the oil companies put the price of diesel up higher than petrol, despite it being cheaper to produce, and now us diesel car owners are being painted as scum.

Exactly why have the Government picked on us when a lorry (diesel) engine is typically six times as big (in capacity) than a car ? Why not pick on them ?

Also, why not consider the size of a diesel train angine. How many litres are they ? How many gallons per hour do they use ?

Has anyone thought of the impact of banning ALL diesel engines in use today ? No transport system, pasenger or freight, disaster in the agricultural sector. Plus finding all those nice shiny new cars at affordable prices for us who have to give up our cars.

Seems a typical knee jerk reaction to me.

David

In 10 years time when CO2 emissions have gone through the roof they'll be panicking about global warming again, prompting a big "back to diesel campaign.........

Yes, I'm feeling royally screwed - about many other things too!

__________________John

"A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there — even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity." ~ Robert Doisneau

Have you got a diesel car ? Did you buy it on HM Governments recommendation ? Are you beginning to feel royally screwed ?

As an owner of diesel cars for the past 20 years (or thereabouts) I am feeling 'reet annoyed'. First the Government pushes everyone towards buying a diesel car, then the oil companies put the price of diesel up higher than petrol, despite it being cheaper to produce, and now us diesel car owners are being painted as scum.

Exactly why have the Government picked on us when a lorry (diesel) engine is typically six times as big (in capacity) than a car ? Why not pick on them ?

Also, why not consider the size of a diesel train angine. How many litres are they ? How many gallons per hour do they use ?

Has anyone thought of the impact of banning ALL diesel engines in use today ? No transport system, pasenger or freight, disaster in the agricultural sector. Plus finding all those nice shiny new cars at affordable prices for us who have to give up our cars.

Yes, although I'm the last person to argue against the need to prevent the tens of thousands of people dying early in this country from respiratory and cardiac disease from diesel particulates, this is a right c@ck-up on the part of successive governments.

It's worth mentioning that the major part of the problem is caused by old commercial vehicles (who have a powerful lobby in parliament, so I predict they'll get spared on account of the need to maintain British 'business competitiveness'), and those of us private citizens driving recent NCAP-5 and (especially) -6 vehicles are very much less of a problem.

Secondly, if there is a major switch to petrol in the short term, as has been said above there will be another huge rise in carbon output. This is appalling for the environment, but will presumably be conveniently swept under the carpet under the also-convenient guise of doing away with 'Brussels red tape'. I'll be waiting for the announcement in the Daily Fail.

Have you got a diesel car ? Did you buy it on HM Governments recommendation ? Are you beginning to feel royally screwed ?

As an owner of diesel cars for the past 20 years (or thereabouts) I am feeling 'reet annoyed'. First the Government pushes everyone towards buying a diesel car, then the oil companies put the price of diesel up higher than petrol, despite it being cheaper to produce, and now us diesel car owners are being painted as scum.

Exactly why have the Government picked on us when a lorry (diesel) engine is typically six times as big (in capacity) than a car ? Why not pick on them ?

Also, why not consider the size of a diesel train angine. How many litres are they ? How many gallons per hour do they use ?

Has anyone thought of the impact of banning ALL diesel engines in use today ? No transport system, pasenger or freight, disaster in the agricultural sector. Plus finding all those nice shiny new cars at affordable prices for us who have to give up our cars.

Seems a typical knee jerk reaction to me.

David

Yes. And yes.

I bought a new, British, diesel engined car about two years ago.

I would have liked the petrol version, mainly for the gorgeous 'soundtrack' from the exhausts, but also because even then the knives were coming out for diesel.

The real clincher was that road tax on the V6 petrol variant was well in excess of £500 PA at the time, whilst the V6 diesel was about £160, which made it a no-brainer really.

Our tree-hugging neighbours have always taken a dim view of my car, branding it a gas guzzler, (they drive VW diesels), although they have been rather quiet on this subject recently. I cannot think why.

The irony is that my gas-guzzler will comfortably do 60 MPG plus on a run, which is better than either of our neighbours VW's, and better than the epitome of clean driving - the Toyota Prius.

My view is that if it only burns one gallon of fuel oil in sixty miles, exhaust emissions must be fairly low.

Actually, there is a double irony here, as back in the early 1990's, catalytic converters were made mandatory for petrol engined cars, with the specific aim of improving air quality in towns and cities by reducing emissions of unburnt hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen.

Whilst expensive, catalytic converters have undoubtedly been very successful in improving local air quality, but at the same time catalytic converters have significantly increased both fuel consumption and CO2 emissions!

Diesel was encouraged to reduce CO2 emissions, but has reduced air quality in towns and cities, so we have come full circle.

With regard to public transport, I am not sure about the new MTU diesel engines, but the original Paxman Valenta V12 engines fitted to the Inter-City HST sets were about 80 litres capacity each, and burnt around 1.1 Gallons of fuel oil per mile at full chat. That sounds a lot, but an HST could be taking several hundred cars off of the road. And at two miles per minute, passengers will be making significantly better progress than on the road.

(Anyhow, trains are sacrosanct in my book! )

A Paxman Valenta engine being assembled. The HST has one of these at each end of the train.

However, I have heard that air quality in London is best on the days that the bus drivers are on strike, so there is clearly room for improvement in the LT fleet. Why did they decommission the old trams and trolley buses anyway?

London Taxis are another significant source of diesel fumes.

I am also irritated by the number of bus, coach, van, taxi and lorry drivers who seem to think it is perfectly OK to leave their engines idling for hour after hour when parked. Apart form the noise and entirely unnecessary pollution, this behaviour wrecks diesel engines!

I am also irritated by the number of bus, coach, van, taxi and lorry drivers who seem to think it is perfectly OK to leave their engines idling for hour after hour when parked. Apart form the noise and entirely unnecessary pollution, this behaviour wrecks diesel engines!

The problem with this sort of discussion is that the only way to arrive at a sensible strategy is to have a lot of data available to understand the problem. Popular discussions of complex environmental challenges seldom illuminate since most people don't understand the issues. Air pollution is perhaps simpler than global warming, but they are both complex and letting the man on the Clapham Omnibus determine policy is hardly likely to get a result (just as Trump is unlikely to do anything on environmentalism except to make things worse).

Now, I'm not trying to be superior here since I really don't know too much about the issues either. What I do know if that Prof David King (ex Chief Scientific Advisor and the Prof of the Liverpool University Chemistry Dept when I was there) has pronounced the car manufacturers as cheats and liars on NOx emissions and he now believes technology cannot fix the problem of diesel engines producing large quantities of it. So, I think it's inevitable that we need to reduce diesel usage - that's just the science. Where the axe falls and how it falls is a political issue and I for one have very little confidence that it'll end up being anything but an excuse to hike up taxes - because just like the car manufacturers politicians have form in cheating and lying!

I changed my diesel for the equivalent petrol version last year as I could see the writing on the wall for diesels and I wanted rid of mine while it still had some value. It was the only diesel car I've ever owned (I always said I'd never have one!) and while it had huge and enjoyable torque, the petrol variant is a much nicer vehicle to drive. The odd thing though is that while it uses about 20% more fuel than the diesel, the CO2 emissions are low enough to knock it down a notch on the road tax scale. How can that be?

I've always thought the concept of taxing a vehicle on its supposed CO2 emissions was fraught with problems, and it would be so much better simply to tax fuel. Those who drive a higher mileage and therefore emit more pay more.

The London Assembly researched the sources of Nox in London in 2015. This showed the following sources:

Bus, coach and rail public transport 18%

Goods vehicles 17%

Gas heating systems 16%

Non road mobile machinery 14%

Diesel cars 11%

Petrol cars and motorcycles 8%

Aviation 8%

Industry 7%

Quote:

Originally Posted by pdk42

Now, I'm not trying to be superior here since I really don't know too much about the issues either. What I do know if that Prof David King (ex Chief Scientific Advisor and the Prof of the Liverpool University Chemistry Dept when I was there) has pronounced the car manufacturers as cheats and liars on NOx emissions and he now believes technology cannot fix the problem of diesel engines producing large quantities of it. So, I think it's inevitable that we need to reduce diesel usage - that's just the science.

Well, based on the data provided above, even if we took every car off of London's roads we would still have a problem.

If we replaced every petrol or diesel engined car with an electric car, we would simply create an even bigger environmental problem 'somewhere else'; and from what we are told, would probably bring our electricity grid to its knees even sooner than predicted.

As I see it there are two problems.

Firstly; prior to the Clean Air Act 1956, pollution was effectively self limiting, as the smog conditions created made it impossible to do anything much, whilst life itself was snuffed out for many, including my own Grandfather.

Since that time engineers have steadily cleaned up pollution to the point that many of us are no longer aware that we are polluting, leading to the present dangerous position.

Secondly, we have become almost entirely reliant on polluting activities, so any effort to reduce pollution will be both difficult and unpopular.

Clearly there is a need to clean up vehicle emissions, but I believe it would be far more productive to reduce unnecessary vehicle journeys than simply making those vehicles cleaner.

The current fashion for 'just in time everything' has probably done more to clog our roads with delivery vans than anything. And congestion breeds congestion, and pollution.

Rather than taxing vehicles, how about taxing deliveries to make businesses and consumers think ahead a little, to cut down the number of unnecessary panic deliveries? Likewise manufacturers should be encouraged back to bulk deliveries, rather than daily 'just in time' deliveries sufficient only for the day's production.

Efforts should also be made to reduce the need for individuals to travel. As an example, I recently took a mobile phone to our local O2 shop because the IMEI number wasn't recognised. The shop staff were unable to help on a Saturday so I had to return during the week.

Come Monday I explained the problem to their Sony Guru, and was asked to leave the phone with them. A day or two later I received a call advising that it needed to go to the service centre to have a BOS re-flash, and that this would cost £25. However, they couldn't proceed with repairs until payment was received, and couldn't accept payment over the phone. So, yet another 25 mile round trip.

To quote another example, my wife renewed her passport recently. Her new and old passports were both delivered by a private courier, on consecutive days! Why couldn't they have been delivered together, And what was wrong with Royal Mail?

Last week I received two packages, both delivered by DPD on the same day. By two different drivers in two different vehicles!

Precisely!

And did you know that DPD drivers (amongst others) effectively do two very similar rounds each day?

The first is for 'before 10 AM' deliveries, the second is for collections and normal deliveries.

So if you have a 'normal' delivery, DPD will drive past your front door making 'before 10 AM' deliveries, and will then come back to you later. John, our local DPD driver told me that even if I stopped him in the road, the computer system would not allow him to hand over my parcel before 10 AM, or out of sequence.

Given that we have pollution and always will have then the answer is to remove the pollution from the atmosphere in towns, boxes in the streets alongside the various other bits of street furniture containing filters and lights to break down the harmful components into less harmful components. Development of these type of products should be a high level priority.

Allow the public to buy and run the machines as well as the town / city authorities and give them tax breaks for taking on the responsibility.